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After the Shareholder Spring, are we seeing a Savers' Summer? Across Europe, politicians and pension funds are in open revolt against the rock-bottom interest rates that are crippling them. But critics worry that the proposed solutions may be attempting to deny reality.

Last week, the Netherlands became the latest state in northern Europe partially to reject mark-to-market accounting, following Denmark and Sweden. Henk Kamp, the Dutch pensions minister, has proposed a new method of valuing funds' liabilities that is less tied to what is going on in the markets.

Pension funds and their members have been suffering over the past few years, as central banks have held interest rates to the floor. Pensions liabilities are valued using bond yields, which come down as interest rates fall. This makes pension liabilities bigger. The problem is only made worse by quantitative easing and other forms of fiscal stimulus.

In the UK, pensions minister Steve Webb has indicated that the issue is also on his agenda. At a recent industry conference, Webb said that the low interest rate environment was a "nightmare" for schemes and that government "could not stand idly by". Webb did not specify what action might be taken to tackle these problems.

In the Netherlands, pensions cuts are on the agenda. The typical fund's solvency has tumbled from 145% at the end of 2007 to 94% today. With an election looming, Kamp has proposed a partial move away from mark-to-market to stave off the prospect of lower payouts.

Pension liabilities would remain tied to market rates for up to 20 years. After that, rates would be tweaked to bring them closer to a 'baseline' of 4.2%. The precise details are still to be hammered out.

The industry is pleased. Peter Borgdorff, director of PfZW, a Dutch €116bn healthcare sector fund, said: "Allowing pension funds to discount with a different calculation of the interest rate is a good idea. We have already argued this in the Hague...if we can expect a slightly higher interest rate, that means we have to put aside less today to pay the pensions in the future."

ABP, the €261bn civil-servants' fund, also backed Kamp's idea, but said it would only affect its solvency by "a couple of percentage points". ABP has a high proportion of older members whose pensions will fall due in the short term, so an adjustment of long-dated liabilities will benefit the fund less.

The Dutch move follows others around Europe. In June, Danish regulators said that country's pension funds did not have to use market rates to value long-dated liabilities. The same month, the Swedish regulator, Finansinspektionen, proposed a minimum 'floor' for the interest rate used by insurance companies, which provide most private pensions in the country.

Martin Andersson, Finansinspektionen's director, said that it was acting because "market conditions at present are exceptional" and that the regulator "would like to avoid short-sighted behaviour that could have consequences in the long run."

If nothing else, all this suggests some politicians and regulators are turning against the idea that markets are always rational. If it means voters' pensions being cut, then they are willing to change the rules.

There are strong arguments against pension funds and insurers being encouraged to act in pro-cyclical ways. Cutting pensions will only hurt consumer spending in the midst of a downturn. Selling out of equities at the bottom and buying bonds at the top is either the investment strategy of the unwise, or the over-regulated.

But of course, there is a big caveat here. If you think that a low-rate, low-return environment is here to stay – and not just for years, but potentially for decades hence – then today's bond yields look eminently sensible – and marking your liabilities against them, only prudent.